Become Successful by Studying Failure

In many circles, failing is shunned. You don’t mention it, you don’t admit it and you sure don’t hold conferences about it.

But. one of the first thing I learned about Silicon Valley when I arrived here 15 years ago was that it was a place where failure is expected, accepted and maybe even celebrated.

Some companies even acknowledge failure in their corporate cultures–they will say things like “we believe in fail fast.” Meaning: Try something, see if it works, but if it’s a failure, realize it quickly and move on to something else.

At most client meetings and at every lecture, I encourage studying launch failures (as well as successes). You can only get a well-rounded picture of how to launch properly by examining both successes and failures.

Now there is a Silicon Valley conference looking lessons learned from failure–FailCon. They say: “You aren’t a real entrepreneur until you’ve had to deal with failure, and recovering from it – financially, emotionally, and practically – can be challenging.”

I’ll be covering the conference next Tuesday (Oct. 27) and letting you know how the ideas apply to launch. If you are interested in attending yourself, you can register here.

In addition, the organizers seem to run some interesting conferences so keep your eye on their site for other upcoming topics.